Date of Award
8-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department/Program
English
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Naomi Liebler
Committee Member
Adam Rzepka
Committee Member
Meghan Robison
Abstract
This study seeks to analyze the optical performance of power in three of Shakespeare’s plays: Richard II, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. Using a political framework via Kantorowicz’s King’s Two Bodies and Maus’s Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, this paper explores the interior and exterior personas as they pertain and interact with public and private spaces. This paper will track Shakespeare’s contribution to this developing “modern” shift in the understanding of appearance and its role in the presentations of power in these three plays. In each of these plays, I argue, Shakespeare provides us with a series of presentational actions or reactions that jeopardize the structure and order of the sovereignty depicted.
File Format
Recommended Citation
O’Brien, John, "The Eye’s Construction of Power in Richard II, Julius Caesar and Macbeth" (2022). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1119.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1119